


A Haemorrhage Of Violets

by DoreyG



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Aunts & Uncles, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29337663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Are you okay?” He asked. And then, when she looked up at him with a slightly confused expression at his concern: “You haven’t tried to stab anything all day.”
Relationships: Deimos!Kassandra/Stentor, Kassandra/Stentor (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	A Haemorrhage Of Violets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StopTalkingAtMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/gifts).



He found Kassandra sitting on the hill behind the house, curled up into herself and looking down at all of Alexios’ adopted children - who now numbered in the dozens - running around beneath her.

“Are you okay?” He asked. And then, when she looked up at him with a slightly confused expression at his concern: “You haven’t tried to stab anything all day.”

“We could change that right now,” Kassandra said pleasantly, but they’d known each other for years now and he had become adept at seeing through her bluster. She managed to maintain her intimidating expression for a long moment more, and then sighed and shifted deliberately aside on the hill. “I’m fine, Stentor. Just thinking.”

Taking invitations from Kassandra was always a little dangerous, you never knew when she was going to turn the tables on you at a whim, but he thought it might be just about safe. He slowly sat down beside her, debated still keeping his distance for half a moment, but was surprised when she immediately scooted over to him and proceeded to wrap her body entirely around his.

“You can think?” He said into her hair, enjoying how close she was and - as ever - not entirely sure how to express that.

“Ha ha,” Kassandra said, deadpan, and shifted around until she was resting her head on his shoulder instead of painfully driving it right into his chin. “Alexios brought in yet another orphan today, you know.”

“I saw,” he confirmed, because it was hard to miss when Alexios found yet another child. This one had been a little girl, not yet able to walk but apparently amply able to scream. “That’s what got you thinking?”

“She was a lot younger than the strays he usually finds,” Kassandra said, which was also true. Alexios loved adopting orphans, but usually he tended to find them only when they actively ran into his life and started climbing all over him. “She must be barely a year old, if that. So tiny, so small, so delicate. About the age that I was when I was thrown off Taygetos.”

Suddenly everything made sense. “ _Oh_.”

“I try not to dwell on the past too much, if I can help it,” Kassandra said, and he was in no doubt that they were both thinking of the times she couldn’t help it; the occasions, still common even now, when she woke up drenched in sweat and screaming. “There doesn't seem to be any point. But I looked at her, and sudden;y my mind came up with a thousand what ifs. What if Myrrine had been able to save me? What if the cult hadn’t found me? What if somebody like Alexios, somebody kind and good and willing to fight for everything right, had looked after me instead?”

They were never the most demonstrative couple, often barely acted like a couple at all, but that was too much. He put his arm around her and tugged her fiercely to his side.

“What could I have been then?” She asked in a small, quiet voice - one entirely unsuited to his fearsome harpy who could tear the heart out of any man - as she pressed her face even harder into his shoulder.

“Well,” he started, and paused to consider. He had never been good at meaningless platitudes, at saying what people wanted to hear instead of the actual truth, and he had the impression that Kassandra wouldn’t exactly appreciate them either. “You would’ve still probably been the most annoying woman in Sparta.”

“Stentor!” It got Kassandra jerking back from him with a heartfelt glare, at least. She slapped angrily at his shoulder, but it was far softer than most of her blows and accompanied with an undeniably imploring look.

“I mean it. I’m not sure what would’ve happened. Maybe you could’ve been brought up by Myrrine on Naxos and become a fearsome pirate queen. Maybe you could’ve recovered at the temple, been taken back to Sparta and become the first female hoplite. Maybe you could’ve been found by somebody like Alexios, or even a young Alexios himself, and grown up as a feral farmgirl who attacked every visitor that looked at her the wrong way.” He shrugged, as best he could with her still stubbornly burrowed into his side. “Things may have been a little better for you personally, perhaps, but I don’t think anything could’ve ever changed who you truly are.”

“Do…” Kassandra hesitated for an uncharacteristic moment, before she swallowed and continued. “Do you really think that I wouldn’t have been better?”

“No,” he said, and was surprised at how quickly the word came out of his mouth. “No matter what happened, I don’t think there ever could’ve been a better woman in all of Greece.”

They had never really discussed emotions so intimately, both preferring to live in the moment and try to take each day as it came, but that seemed to go over well with Kassandra. She stared at him for a long moment, a complicated expression in her eyes, and then gave a small smile and leaned into him. They kissed like that for a while on the hill, out in the air where absolutely anybody could see them, and then hugged each other just as tightly afterwards.

“Have you ever thought about whether you want children yourself?” He asked her a little later, when the sun had sunk a lower in the sky and she was busy slowly trying to inch her way onto his lap.

“Not really. I’ve had bigger things to worry about for most of my life,” Kassandra said, almost airily but for the fact that she was still trying to get as close to him as humanly possible. “What about you?”

“Bigger things to worry about also,” he informed her, and gave her a little tug until she was properly sitting on him instead of trying to casually clamber around like a particularly ill tempered cat. “It was always a ‘one day’ kind of thing, a distant future that I didn’t ever really think that I’d reach.”

“Yeah, one day,” Kassandra said, soft and almost hopeful, and leant back just enough so that she could look him in the eye instead of just hiding her face in his side. “Do you think our kids would be able to beat Alexios’ kids in a fair fight?”

“What?” He asked teasingly, ignoring the thump of his heart at the thought that Kassandra - fearsome Kassandra - might just want to have children with him. “All of Alexios’ kids at once?”

Kassandra rolled her eyes at him like that was obvious. And, in the end, he supposed it was. If their potential children were anything like them, a little boy with Kassandra’s flyaway hair and habit of baring her teeth or a little girl with his nose and desire to throw himself into any dangerous situation going, they would settle for nothing less than the highest challenge possible.

“I think,” he said very softly, very deliberately, and tightened his arm around her once again to let her know that it was okay. “That our children would be the most fearsome children in all of Greece.”

By Kassandra’s smile, that was all she’d wanted. They fell into a comfortable silence, cuddled there on the hill with the entire future stretching out gloriously before them.


End file.
